


current events

by orphan_account



Category: Free!
Genre: Drabble Collection, Multi, tags updated w/ each chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>mostly unrelated multiship short pieces/requests from tumblr; summaries + warnings go in each chapter.</p><p>currently: older (college) soumomo + unexpected reunions</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. sourin, 01

\--

pre ep 9 // sourin sleepy kisses

\--

 

 

If he tries really hard, he can convince himself that the world is perfect.

Rin gazes at him through cat slit eyes, rich wine fogging up through the haze of heat pressing between them. Golden summer sunlight drifts at them through the windows, all calm and still. Sousuke can imagine, if he wants to, dust particles dancing in the sunbeams, flashing like wishes winking out of reach in his peripheral vision.

He’d rather focus on Rin, on how their faces are centimeters apart, the points of their noses barely touching.

“How long have you been awake?” Sousuke croaks out after a moment, his voice working through the stillness of the afternoon like slow melting glass.

“Dunno… a few minutes? Didn’t wanna wake you up,” and then Rin slides his face across the pillow, touches their lips together gently.

Sousuke feels the heat rise and descend. He shuts his eyes again, because it’s hard to look sometimes -- hard to look at Rin all golden and shining, real as the soreness in his shoulder. He has the picture of Rin smiling like this seared against his eyelids, anyhow -- the tilt at the edge of his smile, like he’s hiding something better, the hard drive in his eyes that makes him all Rin, the way his hair falls past his eyes, red and perfect.

Rin kisses him again, slow and syrupy, honey keeping their mouths close together, and Sousuke lets his hand wander lazily over his back, feeling each precise shift of muscle. They used to press their palms over each other’s backs when they were younger, betting stupidly on who would have more muscle, on who would grow taller judging from the unformed coils under their skin.

If he tries really hard, he can feel the feathered touch of yesterday’s angels along his shoulder blades.

With a soft sigh Sousuke parts his lips, eyes still closed, because their motions are so smooth, so practiced, that it’s easy to follow -- just like that, just like how Sousuke knows every inch of Rin’s skin, just like how he can smooth his thumb over the ridges of Rin’s spine with a steady pressure. If he tries really hard he can convince himself that the world is perfect, that after all these years it’s been kind enough to let him find Rin again, that the sun is hot enough to melt the tension away, slipping it like butter through his fingers.

“Sleepy?” Rin asks, his voice hoarse.

Sousuke lets his eyes peel open to look at him, and the openness on Rin’s face overwhelms him -- the smooth plane of sunlight on his cheek, the flushed swell of his lips. Trust. Admiration. He runs his fingers through Rin’s hair and smiles. “A little.”

Rin’s eyelids drop. His eyelashes are long, curving against his face. Sousuke’s close enough to count them, pliant enough not to try doing just that. “Me too.”

He considers saying it. _My shoulder is injured. I shouldn’t swim this race. I want to be strong again. I’m sorry._ But Rin is already drifting, warm and content under his palm. He considers waking Rin up, knowing that Rin would listen, would help, would make the right decisions. But Rin smiles against his mouth, all his dreams on open display, ripe with promise. So Sousuke keeps quiet, keeps still --

And if he tries really hard, he can convince himself that the perfect world is real.

 


	2. sourin, 02

\--

post ep 10 // sourin

\--

 

 

It’s quiet, the kind of quiet that comes when the rustling of daytime fades into evening, when evening fades into deep night, the kind of quiet where the gentle frothing of waves whitens into the background, lit into champagne, where flecks of foam drift momentarily in the air like stardust.

Sousuke sits, motionless save for the slow in, out, in, out of his breaths, the even, pulsing blinks of his eyes, in the tub, his back pressed against the side -- he’s just barely in Rin’s line of sight, a little blurry, silent enough that Rin feels like if he blinked the wrong way Sousuke would simply disappear. It’s a weird thing to think about someone who’s been there, an honest to god _part_ of himself, disappearing, but that’s what happens, right? When someone stops appearing.

He wonders if Sousuke would take him when he goes.

Because when something is a part of you, it’s almost harder to notice.

He wonders if Sousuke was waiting for him to notice, if Sousuke was some kind of blind spot he didn’t know he had until now. If he’d spoken up sooner. If he’d been more suspicious -- Sousuke’s always been able to predict him, but it’s never been the other way around --

“Rin,” Sousuke murmurs into his ear, “stop.”

Rin shivers into the quietness of the water.

“It’s finished now, okay? You did well --”

“Yeah,” Rin hears himself spitting out, frustrated, angry, “ _so_? What about you -- you’re not seriously going to give up swimming, are you?” His voice is cracking, too loud in the open air, and it feels like something’s been torn open in his throat, and all the things he didn’t want to talk about earlier in the day are pouring out like hot lava. “You told me you weren’t -- you _can’t_ \--”

Sousuke’s thumb brushes against his cheek, warm and wet from the water, forcing Rin to turn his head and face him. The smile on his face isn’t so much like sticking a needle between his ribs as taking the needle out, a tug-of-war game of pain and relief. In the light it wavers, dim and bright by breaths, easing the tension out of him in the way that Sousuke’s always done best, and Rin finally collapses against his side.

“I don’t want to leave you behind,” Rin mumbles. “I don’t want this -- I don’t want _any_ of this -- “

“You’re not leaving me behind,” Sousuke says, his voice all soft and strained, like he’s in pain again, except this time, Rin doesn’t know what kind of pain it is. “You’re not -- I’m not going to just sit here and watch you go. Do you really think I would do that?”

The thing is, Rin’s not sure. Because Sousuke’s _lied_ to him before, straight up _lied_ , and

“You’re not,” Sousuke repeats, his gaze too fast and too serious, the water bubbling around his chest, his hand still cradling Rin’s cheek. Rin can’t remember Sousuke ever touching his face, the pressure so soft it feels ethereal, but he doesn’t move away, just lets Sousuke’s palm mould itself against the curve of his cheekbone.

“I…”

“Don’t go crying on me again,” says Sousuke, the corner of his mouth quirking up, and for a moment he sounds like the Sousuke Rin saw at the beginning of the year, the one that smirked at him from the front of the classroom, the one that shrugged and offered to swim two legs of a relay. It makes Rin almost believe that this whole thing is a dream, like he’ll wake up tomorrow and the four of them would swim, fly like bullets through the water, shout promises about training hard for nationals.

Then Sousuke lets his hand drop. “It’s not worth it, okay?”

“ _Fuck you_ , Sousuke,” Rin snaps, flinching backwards like he’s the one being sworn at, and then surges forward to kiss him, hard and desperate, like he’s trying to deposit his own good health into Sousuke. It’s sudden and bursting through his skin, the rushing in his head, the pounding in his chest, too hard and too painful and not entirely right, the hollow ache flaming into his stomach. “You don’t get to say that, okay?” He kisses him again, no tongue, almost fiercely, “You. Don’t. Get. To. Say. That.” Sousuke just sits there, letting himself be kissed, not responding but never pushing him away, either, until Rin’s taking glassy gasps, his hands shaking.

When he lets himself fall back, back into the water, settling on the other side of the hot tub, he’s breathing too fast, snaring his gaze onto the redness of Sousuke’s mouth.

“I don’t have a dream anymore,” Sousuke tries, his hand coming up automatically to grasp at his injured shoulder. It takes him a while to react to his own words.

“Sousuke --”

“I don’t. I can’t let myself sit here, but I don’t know where to _go_ \-- I don’t know what to do.”

He looks lost, and it takes Rin a while to realize that he _is_ lost, separated from everything he’s been working towards, everything he’s yearning for in the past two years. It hits him like a punch to the stomach, every time, that he’s never going to swim like this with Sousuke again, not in Rio, not in Tokyo, not ever.

But he can still swim, he thinks, and Sousuke can still swim, and Sousuke will get better, and he’ll swim again.

He finds Sousuke again, settles himself to kneel on the seat between his legs, lets Sousuke keep him balanced. “You could start by healing,” he whispers, pressing his mouth gently against the corner of Sousuke’s jaw. “You could get better again.”

Sousuke shifts, shivers despite the heat.

They should talk about this, maybe, about the way Sousuke’s hands are settled at his waist, on his back, the way Rin drapes himself over his good shoulder, the way Rin’s eyes close when he kisses his cheek, the corner of his eye, his slow pulse made warm by the water, the curve of his shoulder. They should talk about how they’re pressed up against each other, chest to chest, then nose to nose, damp black and red bleeding together.

“You could study for our lit exam on Wednesday,” Rin suggests, between small kisses against the line of his shoulder, “You could make the goddamned crepes you keep saying you know how to make, or pay me back for the soda I threw at you. Help me keep Momo out of trouble. Coach Ai, the kid loves you. But you could heal, all the way. No more hiding. Don’t… don’t hide from me anymore, okay?”

He feels Sousuke exhale, feels his lungs fill up again. Feels the muffled thunder of his heartbeat, a calm, supportive thudding against his own.

He hasn’t said enough. He knows it. Sousuke knows it. But for some reason, he can’t bring himself to say anymore, like all the unspoken words are making tiny lattice cuts against his throat, like he’ll have to communicate through tears, and he’s already told himself not to do that anymore.

Then:

“Yeah. Okay,” Sousuke breathes into his hair.

Rin lets himself be held, spans time to the rise and fall of Sousuke’s chest. When Sousuke tilts him back it’s easier to look him in the eye, this time. It’s weirdly comforting to let the water drift against their bodies while Sousuke kisses him on his mouth, on his chin.

They could talk about the messy tangle of their legs, how they don’t let go of each other until long after the water has stopped bubbling, stilling into coolness, how Rin crawls into bed with Sousuke in the dark, blindly reaching. They could talk about losing things and finding things, losing each other and finding each other, tumbling through the foolish years they spent apart.

But they don’t have to, when Sousuke kisses his hair the first time they wake up, when Rin nuzzles into his chest the second time, when Sousuke smiles at him the third and last time, so open and content that the wide blue sky cannot hope to compete.

 

 

 


	3. soumomo, 01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> soumomo ice cream dates + vague talking about the future, rated t for mildly implied homophobia & secret rs and stuff.

\--

 

 

It's the kind of summer that’s so hot it makes Momo dizzy when he walks to class, staggering through a haze of heat and humidity. He feels zombie-like when the almost solid block of cooler air greets him whenever he enters a building, even more zombie-like when he has to go back out and swim through sun-baked open air.

If he could, Momo thinks, he would probably lounge around in nothing but his underwear all day, or spend the entire day at the pool, but Rin said specifically _not_ to do that, so, instead, he flings himself into Rin’s bed every afternoon, savoring the third year privilege of having air conditioned dorms.

Sometimes he drags Ai along with him, but Ai seems perfectly content to bake in their oven of a room, unconcerned by the heat in the magical way that he has.

Rin makes an impatient noise from his desk, his hair blowing prettily from the aircon. From the other desk, Sousuke sits almost immobile in front of his laptop, scrolling through some kind of blog -- architecture, Momo guesses carelessly, and then peels himself away from the mattress to slump over Sousuke’s good shoulder.

“Whatcha lookin’ at, senpai?”

“A blog.”

“What _kind_ of blog?”

“Travel,” Sousuke says after a moment, and Momo catches Rin giving him a startled look. He doesn’t ask anymore questions, instead deciding that today is as good a day as any to battle the heat again, tugging Sousuke up by his arm impatiently.

“Hey, let’s go out for ice cream!”

“Sousuke --” starts Rin, uncertain, but Momo leaps towards the door, dragging Sousuke with him.

“Doesn’t it bother you that he’s always at his desk, Rin-senpai? Ice cream will do him good! It always cheers me up and I’m sure it’ll cheer you up too, but you look like you’re kinda busy, so it’ll just be us for now. Don’t worry, I’ll have him back by dinner!! Hahaha, HA HA HA.”

The door slams shut.

It occurs to Momo as they’re traipsing out the dorm building that he probably should have at least let Rin finish what he was about to say.

 

 

The ice cream shop is about a block away from campus, which means that by the time the two of them wrangle open the jingling door, they’re both damp with sweat, and when Momo finally lets go of Sousuke’s arm, there’s a sizeable red mark rolled across his skin.

“I’ll treat you, senpai,” Momo offers, but Sousuke’s eyebrow flickers, and then the corner of his mouth quirks up.

“You brought your wallet with you?”

“Well, no, but --”

Sousuke taps his forehead with one of his amused smiles. “How’re you going to treat me then, idiot?”

And then it’s like he’s pressed some kind of off button in Momo -- all the nervous humming in his body goes right out, along with this giant breath he’d been holding since they left the room. Sousuke looks like the regular Sousuke he knows now, instead of some mystery with travel plans. He gets them both vanilla cones, lets Momo load his up with toppings, and then sits them both down at one of the tables.

“You’re going back to Tokyo, senpai?” Momo asks, after a silent minute of licking at his cone. The ice cream stings his mouth a little with how cold it is, but it’s a nice kind of pain.

Sousuke takes a bite of his own ice cream. “Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

Momo knows he’s treading dangerous territory, but that doesn’t stop him from asking anyway. “Hey, does Rin-senpai know?”

“I don’t know,” Sousuke says again, his voice stopping just short of cold, or maybe resigned -- Momo can’t tell. “We don’t really… talk about it.”

“But you talk about Rin-senpai’s future all the time, why don’t you talk about y--”

“Because there’s nothing to _talk about_ ,” Sousuke bites out, and then sets his cone down on his napkin, where it stands, perfectly balanced. Momo stares at it for so long that his own cone starts to drip onto his hand, sticky sweet sliding over his thumb. It’s not as cold anymore either, but at least the fan is on high, prickling wind against the back of Momo’s hair, ruffling Sousuke’s bangs slightly.

Momo frowns and stuffs the entire cone in his mouth in one go, finding relief that the ice cream is still collectively colder than the burning in his mouth, even though he knows the stinging is coming. While his teeth crunch into the shell of the cone, Sousuke sighs heavily.

“I didn’t mean to yell,” he says, all quiet, looks all resigned and almost frightened. Momo opens his mouth to say something, something about how there are other things he’s good at just like how there are other summers after this one, but instead his hand slides stickly across the table to latch onto Sousuke’s fingers.

Sousuke looks up at that, and it makes the heat of summer rush into Momo’s forehead, because he doesn’t _do_ this, doesn’t do small intimate gestures in public, instead preferring heartlessly flashy things like leaping on Sousuke’s back or leering at him in the locker rooms in a way that could be written off as a joke. _It’s scary_ , Momo told Sousuke, back when he still felt too keenly the burn of his stare from across the pool, _I feel like everyone can tell_.

Momo feels Sousuke squeeze his hand a little before letting it go, handing him a napkin. “How are you such a messy eater?”

“I have to eat fast at home!” He squints at the half-melted remnants of Sousuke’s cone, still balanced on the table. “Are you gonna eat that?”

“No, I’m good,” and Momo grins at that, finishing off the second cone happily.

 

 

They don’t talk much on the way home, walk with a socially acceptable amount of space between them, letting the heat swallow the lingering bits of coolness from their mouths. It isn’t until they’re turning back onto campus that Momo pipes up again, just to make sure.

“You’ll… tell Rin-senpai, right? About… you know, whatever you’re going to do?”

His voice is small, smaller than he’s used to, so when Sousuke doesn’t answer, he lets the question drift, an almost solid thing between them.

Then Sousuke spins him against the brick wall of their dorm building, not hard enough to hurt but enough that Momo feels the heat of it at his back, prickling against his thin shirt. Sousuke touches their lips together, once, then twice, and Momo feels lightheaded enough that the heat disappears, drives itself somewhere far away.

“I promise,” Sousuke tells him, the two words filling Momo’s throat with vanilla sweetness, “I’ll figure it out, okay?”

 

 

 


	4. harurin, 01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> warnings for bathroom-related things and rin being embarrassing and haru being embarrassing and makoto being a scheming mother and all sorts of college things. au in which they don’t meet until their first year of college; they’re third years here.

-

 

 

It isn’t that Rin doesn’t know what Haru looked like when he showered — they’re on the swim team together, and Haru was never, even when they first met, shy about peeling away all of his clothes (in one go, too, which Rin still hasn’t exactly figured out, although he isn’t complaining).

It’s just Rin doesn’t know that Haru, apparently, likes to shower in places that are definitely not his own bathroom.

 

Rin’s over at Makoto’s single, his spacious, luxurious, made from a twenty-one year old boy’s dreams dorm — which basically means that it’s cramped as hell, littered with clothes and food and textbookx and with a guitar slanted into one corner of the living-room-bedroom-dining-room-studying space — and they’re going over biology notes together, taking turns explaining concepts outlined in the past three chapters while commencing grandly over joint panic about their upcoming midterm.

Rin tells Makoto he’s going to use the bathroom, a perfectly natural thing to do at a friend’s place. Makoto says, sure, and he’ll grab some snacks from this sad looking plastic bin that they untruthfully call a pantry.

Rin wanders down the narrower space that he supposes could be called a corridor, makes a sharp right, opens the door, clicks the door closed. Unbuttons his jeans.

Three seconds later, Rin speeds out of the bathroom with his jeans still unbuttoned, red faced and yelling.

Something thuds onto the bare floor. It sounds like glass. Broken glass, actually.

“Rin? Are you okay?”

“ _Why didn’t you tell me Haru was in there_ ,” Rin hisses. Hisses is probably a mild way to put it. Screeching might be closer to what’s actually happening. “I was about to take a fucking piss in front of him! I almost whipped it out!  _In front of him_!”

Instead of acting apologetic (which Rin kind of expects) or horrified (which Rin kind of expects) or exasperated (which Rin expects a little less before remembering that this is Makoto Tachibana he’s talking about, the only twenty-one year old in this entire country who’s somehow managed the same facial expressions as their extremely maternal forty-six year old biology professor), Makoto chooses to respond with mild surprise.

“Oh. Is he?”

“Are you  _joking_?”

Makoto blinks a few times. “Oh, yeah, he was here earlier today, I guess he never left. But you can go ahead, I don’t think Haru minds —”

“Makoto, I’m not going to  _pee in front of Haru_.”

“Oh yeah, right! Well, just tell him to hurry up, then.”

Rin tries his hardest not to wonder why Makoto’s acting so casual about this. It’s probably one of those freaky childhood friend habits. Not that he’s ever thought about using the bathroom while Sousuke was showering. “Has Haru  _ever_  hurried in the shower?”

“Um,” Makoto thinks for a few moments, a few infuriating moments, and Rin thanks his lucky fucking stars that he doesn’t need to pee  _that badly_ , “No?”

“Rin,” comes Haru’s voice, muffled and distorted but still smooth and dreamy and basically forcing Rin to suddenly remember that his pants are still unbuttoned, which he fixes with his face glowing a dangerous fire ember red, “can you hand me my conditioner? I left it in my bag.”

It’s telling, Rin thinks angrily, that he still wants to listen to Haru. He spots the bag in question propped against Makoto’s bag and rummages through it. Finds nothing. Rummages again. Still nothing, so Rin heads back to the bathroom, and instead of talking through the door, opens the door and glares at Haru through the hazy glass door.

“It’s not there,” Rin says irritably.

“That’s because it’s in here,” Haru replies, calmly sliding the door open enough to stick his hand, clutching onto the bottle of conditioner tightly, through it, before sliding it open all the way with a smooth  _schlick_. “I just wanted you to come in.”

Rin lets this sink in for about ten seconds. The fact that Haru’s just standing there with the water still off, shampoo dripping down onto his shoulders, soap suds sliding down his chest, a white foamy crown around his head. The fact that he’s had a giant, rainbow vomit inducing crush on Haru doesn’t exactly help the saturation of red on his face or the way he starts back towards the door, which for reasons known to Satan himself doesn’t open inwards but  _outwards_ , only to have Makoto laugh, shut the door, and basically trap him into the bathroom.

Rin decides to never study at Makoto’s again. They’ll just have to deal with his roommate instead.

And then Haru sighs, like Rin isn’t the one trying to keep his body temperature below feverish every time they talk, steps out of the shower, dripping everywhere on the floor, slides his pruny fingers around the back of Rin’s neck and tugs him down for a kiss. It’s drippy and damp and Haru’s completely naked, and soap is melting into Rin’s T-shirt.

Haru pulls back. Rin is pleased to see that his face is also quite red.

“Okay?” Haru murmurs, his gaze flickering between Rin and the wall next to Rin’s head.

“I’m,” says Rin, and to his horror, feels a stinging at his lower eyelashes. He chokes it back with a laugh, because fuck it all, fuck everything, fuck the shower and Western style bathrooms and Makoto shutting the door, if this is how Haru wants to operate, he’ll go with it. “Yeah. Yeah.”

He pauses.

“Can you still hurry up, though?”

 

 

 


	5. mako+haru, 01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> apparently they are capable of making friends with other people. who knew? haru is surprised. makoto is also surprised, but he hides it better.

\--

 

Makoto, laughter tumbling out of his lips in ripples by the edge of the water. The way he laughs is brighter than each phantom gold leaf catching against the sunlight; Haru would want to catch it between his fingertips, collect each laugh in his palm and then throw them up to the heavens, but —

“That,” Makoto manages between wiping at his eyes, “is the most unfortunate tan I’ve  _ever seen_.”

Haru wants to die.

Embarrassing things don’t happen to Haru, most people would say. Embarrassment is the only thing Haru actually chases after, as far as daily life goes — snorting noodles up his nose during lunch, tripping over a brick, tripping over  _anything_ , forgetting his keys and his phone in his dorm, those are things that happen to people like Makoto or Rei, not him. Usually Haru has to lunge across a busy street and tackle embarrassment to the ground and then make out with it in the grimy concrete in front of an audience of a hundred people to feel anything close to embarrassment.

Except, he thinks, petulantly blowing bubbles in the water, for now.

“Haru,” Makoto says after calming down somewhat, “you’ve been soaking in there for a really long time and we said we’d meet Yamazaki-kun for dinner in,” he glances at his watch and then lurches towards the pool, “uhh, twenty minutes ago.”

“I’m not moving until you give me the towel,” Haru bubbles.

“It’s really not that bad,” Makoto promises, “it just caught me off guard.”

“Absolutely not.”

Makoto pauses. Makoto frowns. Haru’s stomach starts sinking towards the bottom of the pool. Makoto opens his mouth, and then shuts it, and then pouts in a way that Haru feels is probably illegal across all seven continents. If Makoto’s laughter is able to catch sun rays, then his pout is probably able to catch all the tears shed by angels combined. His entire body exudes disappointment. “Haru,” he starts, “come  _on_ , we haven’t seen him for the entire summer —  _I_  haven’t seen  _you_  for like, a month.”

Haru lingers in the pool for as long as he can stand the gentle green of Makoto’s gaze, and then sticks his hand out reluctantly. To his credit, Makoto does grab a towel before pulling him out, swinging the towel around his torso immediately. Good ol’ Makoto. A good man.

Because underneath that towel lies the remnants of the prank his team pulled on him during their last training camp of the summer — something about sleeping on the beach, connecting with the burning sun, cute stickers resulting in a neat line of untanned skin spelling out the phrase TAKE ME OFF glowing proudly down his spine, ending just above the line of his jammers.

A little part of Haru is pleased that he isn’t all alone in Tokyo, swimming solitary laps in the pool day after day — pleased that he has people who will holler when he cuts down his time, who will snap towels at him in the locker rooms and not care that he’s a nobody from an unknown little town with a sleepy coast. That he doesn’t have to constantly call Makoto under the guise of being bored (he’s not bored, somehow, never bored, absorbed in chasing his own dream).

Makoto can’t help laughing again when he sees the pale figures. Haru thinks now would be a good time to walk briskly towards the showers. He doesn’t think Makoto would follow him. A lot of things are different about Makoto now — the most obvious one regarding his wardrobe, which has evolved from what appeared to be a more colorful version of his father’s into something strangely and unexpectedly stylish. Then his watch. His glasses — Makoto went to get new glasses, new prescription and all without Haru, even though he hates walking around with his pupils dilated by himself. There’s this focus in his eyes too, one that used to be all friendly vagueness, now sharpened into something stronger. Haru shuts his eyes as soap slides from his hair down his face.

“You forgot to rinse off the back of your head,” Makoto points out, and Haru jumps.

“I thought you were waiting by the door.”

Makoto laughs. “I guess I missed you a little more than I thought, Haru-chan.”

Haru’s stomach warms. The water cools. He finishes rinsing, holds his hand out for the towel that Makoto hands him, makes sure his face is hidden when he mutters “Yeah, guess I missed you too.”

 

 

 


	6. soumomo, 02

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Prompts, you say? Sousuke and Momo, years later, they run into each other at a night club. And my, has Momo grown...
> 
> **warning** for lots of alcohol, but they're both of legal drinking age now. this was floating on my tumblr and i meant to expand on it, but just didn't get around to doing it. 

\--

 

 

Sousuke doesn’t know what he’s tossing down his throat, exactly - a blend of sunset and boredom, rising headache coupled with a sore throat, all tied together by the culmination of a week’s worth of bad decisions. Drinking on a sore throat is probably one of the worst things he could be doing at the moment, but the sting of alcohol in his empty stomach is the same kind of addictive as picking at a scab, so he keeps doing it. The bar he’s sitting at is blue-lit, lined with shot glasses, pricey in the kind of way that his wallet can’t really handle.

Another bad decision. Whatever.

His phone buzzes on the counter, lights up with a text message that’s a little bit hazy, which makes him wonder if he’s starting to get really drunk or if he needs to get glasses. After a few moments of blank staring he recognizes his roommate’s name and picks out the necessary meanings from the characters -  _gonna go see my gf for the weekend, appreciate it if you could feed my fish for me while im out thanks_.

Sousuke wonders if he’d be able to kill a tank full of goldfish in two days. Wouldn’t be surprised if he could, the way the week is going. Nevertheless he’s still strung together enough to type an affirmative reply.

And then someone slides into the seat next to him, some kid in a sleeveless hoodie probably trying to act older than he really is.

After a beat, the someone grips his shoulder and yells, right in his face, “Hey, Sousuke-senpai? Is that you? It’s you, isn’t it? Do you remember me?”

Sousuke allows himself to stare at the young man in front of him in alcoholic confusion - the first thing he notices is a tattoo of a stag beetle on his arm, and the second thing he notices is a bullet-like piercing in his ear that gleams occasionally from the low lighting. And the third thing he notices is the way the guy’s smiling at him, too close, too familiar, too bright, eyes a feline shade of yellow. “Uh,” he starts, because the smile is starting to ring up memories, bell-like behind his eyelids.

“It’s me, senpai, it’s Momotarou, hey - what are you doing here all by yourself, senpai? You wanna come hang with us for a bit?”

“Momo…” Sousuke hesitates, “… tarou?”

“Yeah, I swam with you in the relay, back at Samezuka! Did you forget about me?” Momotarou blinks, his eyelids fluttering as Sousuke leans in, frowning, to take a closer look. They’re both standing now, nose to nose, and Sousuke vaguely remembers commenting on his height, back in the day, and thinking about how sharp his eyelashes were, darker than most people would expect for a kid with such bright hair.

He hesitates more, and then brushes his thumb against the corner of Momotarou’s eye, swallows around the scraping in his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember you… backstroke, right?”

Momotarou lights up, or maybe he doesn’t - he can’t tell if it’s the rush of vodka or the fourth White Russian or the static that’s swimming around his vision that makes Momotarou’s face really close to his own, close enough that he can smell the sting of hard liquor under the warmer scent of beer on the kid’s breath, all gliding underneath his cologne - Momo wears cologne? the  _fuck_? Sousuke tips his forehead heavily into Momo’s shoulder and inhales sharply, ignoring the angry buzzing in his ears.

Maybe it’s because Momo’s the same height as he is now, broad shoulders, lithe but powerful, and he smells sharp and sweet, ginseng and honey and cold weather, which normally would be a sobering combination for Sousuke but is now, instead, something heady and enticing.

“…Sousuke?” Momo’s got his hands on his arms now, shaking him gently, “senpai, you okay?”

— Momo has a really beautiful face, Sousuke thinks, slim and pointed, the whites of his eyes shining like dim stars, his mouth unfairly red, really unfair.

When Momo talks again his voice is quieter, less frantic, sleepy almost, resting like molten amber against Sousuke’s eyelids. “Hey, we can get out of here if you’re not feeling too -”

Sousuke leans in, the rest of Momo’s words washing out with the rushing in his ears, and kisses him. It’s stupid and unfair and rushed, the way he breathes into Momo’s half-open mouth, the way he backs Momo up into the bar — the way Momo  _lets_  him, roaring to life and hooking his arms around Sousuke’s neck, arching against his chest.

Momo’s all warm and sweet and steady against him, which is different from how he used to imagine it. But he’s still eager, inviting, opening his mouth, holding Sousuke’s bottom lip between his teeth in gentle tugs. Sousuke’s pushing Momo hard against the counter now, but he’s drunk — too drunk, unable to let go long enough to do something else, until the door flies open and slams shut with the arrival of some new group, letting a rush of cold air wrap stinging hands against the back of his head.

He pulls back, startled, to see Momo’s face swimming up at him, a blank look of shock settling into his eyes, the swell of his lips. “Senpai, I -”

Sousuke has to stumble back a step, the effect of putting distance between them somewhat ruined by the way he has his hands on Momo’s waist for balance. The rest of the bar wavers into focus slowly, blue lights, too much noise, cold sweat. “Fuck,” he says, his voice hoarse, “fuck, I’m sorry,  _shit_ , I’m so —” He breaks off into a coughing fit, each toss up his throat cracking up his voice a little more.

The way Momo looks at him is — it shoots heavy discomfort into the pit of his stomach. “Hey. Let’s get out of here, alright? This place is too loud for you right now, let me just grab my coat.”

“Take me with you,” Sousuke slurs, the words like syrup, clinging resolutely to his lips - he hasn’t said these words to anyone, not for years and years, and it tastes like hard candy, the best kind of sour and the best kind of sweet, both of them prickling into his throat and making his voice ragged, “take me with you, please, take me with you, please? Don’t leave. I’m sorry.”

“Of course. Of course, I’m not gonna leave you here, okay? Come on.”

\--

When Sousuke wakes up it’s with the mother of hangovers hammering into his skull, forcing him to close his eyes immediately after opening them. He sits there throbbing into the darkness until there’s a fluttering touch at his forehead, and the weight on his chest shifts and floats away. Something clicks in the distance, and the darkness gets illuminated by this faint, candle-like glow.

“Water, senpai?”

He opens his eyes again to see an unfamiliar room, all lightning colored, lit by a single lamp. Then Momo’s helping him sit up, tilting something cool into his mouth. He swallows. His stomach churns. He realizes he’s not wearing a shirt. “Where…?”

“My roommate and I took you back here,” Momo explains softly, and that’s when Sousuke’s mind snaps back into place. Wait. Momo?

“What happened to my shirt?”

Momo shifts. “You, uh… kinda threw up on it, so we just… removed it?” It’s not supposed to be a question, but it somehow comes out like one. Sousuke stares at him.

“Where’s your roommate?”

“He went home for the weekend. How’re you feeling, anyway?”

Sousuke thinks about lying, and then wonders why he’d lie, and then wonders why he _wouldn’t_  lie, and then tells the truth anyway. He owes that much to Momo, at least. “Like someone stuck a spoon down my throat, scooped out my stomach, and then shoved it in my brain.”

Momo makes a sympathetic face. “Toilet’s that way, if you wanna -”

“No, uh… think I’m good for now.” Sousuke eases his head against the wall. “Thanks for… “

He meant to say  _getting me out of there_  but instead he starts to say  _not leaving me_ , except Momo interrupts, too quick, his smile like sanded plastic, “No problem, Sousuke-senpai! We’re friends, right? Even if you thought I was annoying or … anyway, it’s fine. Drink some more water.”

“You thought I thought you were annoying?” Sousuke has to ask, because he can’t remember ever thinking that at all, not even through the thud of his hangover slamming his brain repeatedly into the past, then shoving it back towards the present. He thinks he might have motion sickness from thinking, and the only fixed point in this whole thing is Momo, vivid and warm and  _there_. In return, Momo chews awkwardly at his lip.

“I mean, no? Maybe? I don’t know.”

“I didn’t, though,” says Sousuke, and he could be lying for all he knows, but right now he believes he isn’t. “I didn’t think you were annoying. What made you think that?”

Momo shrugs a little. “I never said I was thinking it.”

“But I didn’t,” Sousuke repeats.

“I didn’t say you did,” Momo presses his point quietly, and then sighs. “It’s like, four in the morning, can we just sleep this off?”

Sousuke looks at him for a long time, his head still pounding, too exhausted to question anything further. He nods, sips at his water, and then sets the cup down at Momo’s desk and lets his head fall onto the pillow again. After a moment, Momo clicks off his lamp crawls into bed with him. He’s too tired to question that as well.

But there is something he has to make sure of, first.

“Momo,” he murmurs softly.

“Yeah.”

“About earlier, I…”

Momo’s eyes flash at him through the darkness. “It’s fine, Sousuke-senpai. I could’ve stopped you if I didn’t want — I mean, I could’ve stopped you.”

The slow warmth that creeps over his body has nothing to do with Momo curling up under the covers. Sousuke’s brain feels like it’s dragging itself through sand when he asks, even more softly than before, “Can I…”

Momo presses up against him, all long limbs and cool pajamas, and Sousuke lets out a deep sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles sleepily, again, because — because he is. Because Momo hums and drapes his arm over Sousuke’s side and wriggles around until he gets comfortable, just like how Sousuke thought he would. Because Momo tucks his face into the pillow right next to Sousuke’s head.

Then Momo kisses his neck, in the fleeting way he has that leaves Sousuke numb with wonder.

“We’ll figure it out in the morning, okay, senpai?”

 

 


End file.
